Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

[dartmonkey]

There's a 'Nindies' Sale on for about a week at the moment, all 25-33% off. Some decent stuff, but I'm looking at Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Has anybody here played it? My wife and I have almost 100%ed Overcooked, have enjoyed Death Squared in spurts and I'm looking to itch scratch that couch co-op itch again. How would it go down with a novice who got super in to Overcooked?

[SuperBiasedMan]

Lovers is great! A very cute game that's relatively simple to pick up. It does get hard, especially as a pair rather than 3 or 4. Usually, you optimally need to do at least 3 things. It's not as hectic as Overcooked though, because the space you have to move in is a lot simpler and consistent (unlike say, switching to the tilting pirate ship stage in Overcooked).

[dartmonkey]

Thanks, I picked it up. And Thimbleweed Park and Thumper! Trying to tick off a few of my list.

 

In ten months I've got nearly 30 games of various sizes on Switch. A couple of those are demos. Seems like a big number - I'm starting to think a 128gb SD card won't last the life of the system.

 

Man - everyone's losing their minds! http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-01-11-nintendo-fans-spent-all-of-last-night-waiting-on-a-direct-announcement

[Roderick]

New Mini Direct out, with the following things:

 

- Dark Souls for Switch! We had guessed this one was coming of course. A Remastered version with all the add-ons and Artoriases. So if you feel like kindling and dying and gitting gud and praising the sun and jumping here while on the move, this is for you.

 

- Luigi is coming to Odyssey! That's a welcome thing. Not really as a playable character though: there's a new kind-of-multiplayer mode called Balloon Fight, where you first hide a balloon in a level, and then another person can race to find it. And yoy can find other folks' balloons.

 

- Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze is coming to Switch. Now all we need is Captain Toad and Tokyo Mirage Sessions and there won't be a single good game left on the Wii U that isn't ported.

 

- On that note, Hyrule Warriors is also coming. Which I think is a good move. I have seen Fire Emblem Warriors in action and it looks so dreary, graphically speaking. The humdrum engine they use for this series fares much better with the simpler and more colorful Zelda stylings.

 

- Some add-ons for some existing games, hooray!

[Nappi]

I really hope the new Mario Tennis game will be good! I have been itching to playing something like this for some time now.

 

[dartmonkey]

A pretty packed 14 minutes.

 

- Any reason to revisit Odyssey is good. The balloon thing looks limited, but it's free.

- I've wanted to play The World Ends With You for years.

- Dark Souls Remastered! Sources told Kotaku that the goal is to release the whole trilogy

 

They're steadily getting through my pie-in-the-sky wishlist! -

Rocket League

Doom

Inside

Dark Souls 3/Dark Souls Trilogy

Spelunky

The Witness

Firewatch

Portal/2/Orange Box

Undertale

Downwell

FTL

 

[dartmonkey]

Excitebike Switch announced!... sort of. Not really.

 

Some crazy shit going on at Nintendo but it looks kinda fun. And recyclable. Time to have a kid.

[Roderick]

This is such a left field thing. I love it purely for its bonkers concept and visual style. This is something LEGO would normally do and feels like a good fit for Nintendo.

[dartmonkey]

Heads up - there's a chunky 75% off Oxenfree at the moment.

[Simon]

Brilliant, thanks for the tip @dartmonkey!

 

Labo seems very clever. Building those cardboard contraptions would be fun, and even if some the actual games might eventually lose their novelty value, at least you're not then left with a huge waste of plastic (thinking about the Guitar Hero Wii accessory in my loft). I Iove that it is all recyclable.

[Nappi]

I bought and finished SteamWorld Dig 2 and Steamworld Heist.

 

I really liked the feeling of progression in SteamWorld Dig 2. Unlocking new systems, abilities, and gear never stopped feeling good. I wasn't too keen on the challenge caves that required good precision and/or speed, and hated most of the Boss fights. Fortunately, I had heard about the final boss beforehand, and knew how to prepare accordingly. I enjoyed the game, but probably won't be buying SteamWorld Dig, because I assume the sequel is a more polished version of that.

 

The basic gameplay of SteamWord Heist is absolutely my shit, and I feel that sequel (which is hopefully in the works) will be fantastic as long as they tweak the progression system a bit. The 10 or so playable characters all had pretty cool and unique abilities that are gradually unlocked as they level up. However, they only get experience points if they take part and survive the story missions (for which you select 3 characters on average). Because (1) the missions are typically quite challenging, (2) because you don't know what kind of enemies to expect from any given mission, and (3) because you lose half of your fucking money if you fail a mission, I didn't feel like experimenting and instead used my highest level characters that I had found to be effective in most scenarios. This of course meant that the level cap between those characters and the other ones grew even larger, which was unfortunate because the other characters seemed pretty cool too. I get the per-character progression system in XCOM because you only have a few classes and the soldiers can die permanently. With 10 characters and no permadeath, the decision just takes some fun out of the game.

 

On a more positive note, I'm in awe about how well they implemented 2D turn-based tactical shooter with analog aiming work. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to distinguish between different elements (e.g. floors that you can shoot through and that you cannot) but that was never the case. Landing a blind ricocheting shot never stopped feeling good. Like I said, I think the sequel of this game will be amazing. I already liked this more than I did Mario + Rabbids (which I got bored of and quit playing halfway through act 3).

 

 

Next up on my Switch list will probably be Bayonetta 2. I'm not a huge fan these types of 3rd person action games, but if I start to feel frustrated, I will probably just turn down the difficulty and enjoy the craziness.

[miffy495]

I beat Mario and Rabbids last night! Whoo!

 

It's a really good game, you guys. Nothing much new to say about it. I don't know if I'll be going back to do the challenge levels though. I feel like I got just enough of the game by going through the campaign. I wish there had been more motivation to switch up my squad. By the time I got Rabbid Yoshi (let alone regular Yoshi) I had learned the ins and outs of the Mario + Luigi + Rabbid Peach trio so well that I was unstoppable. The only things I ever didn't get perfect on were boss fights. The only thing I really wanted to do was swap Rabbid Peach for regular, but there's that weird restriction where you have to have at least one Rabbid in your party at all times. Oh well.

 

Definitely done with the game for now, but feel very satisfied. Next up for me is also Bayonetta/Bayonetta 2 (pre-loaded both already!), but I'm thinking that by the time Donkey Kong comes out I'll be ready to go back in and see how he plays.

[Roderick]

With or without the challenge levels; Kingdom Battle is just about the perfect length. I was wholly satisfied by the time I got gold on everything, and I don't think I'll be returning for the DLC. Maybe not even the inevitable sequel, though if it's years down the line rather than 2019, I might be tempted.

 

Nappi, has Steamworld Heist 2 been confirmed or rumored? I still want to play that and Dig 2 on Switch.

[Nappi]

I haven't heard anything. I was just hoping there would be one. There is a post from July 2016 from one of the developers on Steam forum stating that they are not working on the sequel "at the moment".

 

Hopefully the Switch releases for Heist and Dig work for them, as both series are cool.

[Urthman]

  On 1/18/2018 at 7:55 AM, dartmonkey said:

Excitebike Switch announced!... sort of. Not really.

 

Some crazy shit going on at Nintendo but it looks kinda fun. And recyclable. Time to have a kid.

Oh, that's what that is. In the commercials it looked to me like the Half-Life gluon beam weapon, which was very confusing. 

[Henke]

Finally beat Mario XCOM today. Bwario, Bwaluigi, Bowser Jr, and Megabowser have all been vanquished. It's a good game, though a bit on the easy side. I found it got more engaging towards the end, probably mainly because the difficulty gets cranked up. Steamworld Heist still has it beat when it comes to light-n-breezy turn based tactics games.

 

I mainly used Mario, Rabbid Peach, and Luigi for my team. Occasionally switching out Luigi for Yoshi, including for the final bossfight, which was quite tough.

 

Up next on my Switch: Golf Story!

[miffy495]

We used the exact same teams. They are very good teams. Luigi is sniper of the year.

[Roderick]

Luigi is great as a sniper, but I had Rabbid Luigi in my team most of the time. His vampire slides make him an unstoppable wrecking ball. I never saw much use for the later characters you get, and by that time I had such a well-oiled killing machine I didn't bother to investigate other combos. Rabbid Mario can be useful to lure people in, but beyond that...

[dartmonkey]

For people who have gone digital, the Switch eshop now allows you to pay using accumulated gold coins. I had 600-odd and just got Subsurface Circular with them 👍

[dartmonkey]

OOOO Direct time!!

 

That was solid! Main announcements/takeaways include:

 

- Undertale coming to Switch 

- Praise the Sun Dark Souls amiibo will melt the internet and everything 

- Warioware Gold for 3DS = Rhythm Heaven Megamix for the Warioware games 

- Okami HD on Switch can't be a bad thing

- 3DS getting a Luigi's Mansion GC port!

- Crash Trilogy coming to Switch

- Fucking Dark Souls amiibo

- Captain Toad coming to Switch, dropping Wii U's significant exclusives to just Mario World 3D, Pikmin 3, Mario Maker, NSMBU and... NintendoLand? Also coming to 3DS

- New paid single-player DLC for Splatoon 2

- Smash coming this year with new characters (Inklings)

- I mean, look at it:

[jennegatron]

  On 3/8/2018 at 10:48 PM, dartmonkey said:

- Captain Toad coming to Switch, dropping Wii U's significant exclusives to just Mario World 3D, Pikmin 3, Mario Maker, NSMBU and... NintendoLand? Also coming to 3DS

 

 

TOKYO MIRAGE SESSIONS, NEVER FORGET

[Henke]

Watched the Nintendo Direct this morning and my reaction is eeeeeeehhhhhh. Eeeeeehhhhhhh, I say! Just a bunch of ports of games I've already played, plus a few new games that I don't wanna play. After I'm done with Golf Story I feel like I've played all the Nintendo Switch games I wanna play. All 5 of them. I mean, sure, they were 5 very good games, so I don't regret buying a Switch, but still. :|

[marginalgloss]

I'm so pleased that Captain Toad is coming to both Switch and 3DS. The game's an absolute belter.

 

Okami and Crash Bandicoot HD coming to Switch really feels like a bit like Nintendo thumbing their nose at the dream of the PS Vita. I've no interest in those games but they'll probably sell a lot of copies.

 

I was very excited to see the first Luigi's Manse coming out on 3DS. Dark Moon was fantastic; a rare example of a 3D-ish game that my girlfriend and I could get enthused about. AFAIK the first game isn't quite so well-regarded by comparison but I'm sure they'll have tidied it up a bit.

 

One thing everybody seems to have forgotten about is that Nintendo originally announced a brand new, full-fat Fire Emblem game to be released in 2018. They've kept very quiet about it since. I guess with Smash coming this year we have to assume it's been delayed? I mean, I don't care too much, but if that were coming out tomorrow I'd march out and buy a Switch right now. (So I suppose I do care a bit.)

[Roderick]

I was hoping Captain Toad would appear! It was the final game I wanted to get for Wii U, but now I'm deffo holding out for Switch. As far as Wii U exclusives go, Tokyo Mirage Sessions is indeed The Premium Game to get, and don't forget the AMAZING Kirby And The Raindbow Paintbrush.

 

The Dark Souls amiibo is just splendid, and I am THRILLED that there's Splatoon 2 singeplayer content coming. That'll be the first DLC I buy for a game on Switch, and no, I wasn't even that interested in the Zelda DLC. More Splatoon is irresistible.

 

I never liked Smash, so the announcement did nothing for me, but there's a huge contingent of super fans out there for whom this is godly news.

[osmosisch]

I and the kids have been really enjoying the beauty and wonder of Fe. Exploring the world, befriending its many creatures, wonderful all around.